Real Heroes
by codenamecynic
Summary: Nobody messes with Oghren when the Warden is around.


**A/N: Warning for alcohol and adult language.**

* * *

It happens a lot - more often than she cares to admit, and _definitely_ more often than it should.

She's Elissa fucking Cousland, the Commander of the Grey, the Hero of fucking Ferelden - she's not supposed to _know_ about these things. It's the kind of bullshit that someone decided needed to be kept from her, like she's too fancy and busy to be bothered with petty ill will.

She hears about the other side of it, of course. Oghren drinks too much. Oghren smells. Oghren is rude. Oghren pissed on Bann whoever's carriage wheel. Oghren is a problematic figure because he _is_ all of those things and _does_ all of those things, and as far as Seneschal Varel is concerned he's a publicity nightmare. Elissa thought it was hilarious.

_Thought. _As in _used to think._ Because maybe she _is_ too busy for some things, and maybe Oghren _is_ a consummate mess, but none of that means he isn't a worthwhile person. That he isn't entitled to dignity and respect. What she's overhearing, right here, in her own fucking mess hall from raw green recruits too young to know better and too spoiled to understand that _war_ is _hard - _it's not to be borne.

He can see her start to lose her temper. She's faced away from the voices behind her, in that dark corner she likes to hide in when she just wants a drink to bolster her courage for the kinds of things that come after her in the night without having to sign any damned paperwork, but she can see his face clearly enough. Oghren has thick skin, thick as bronto hide, and he barely even looks up, seems to take no note of the snickering and the too-loud whispers.

"Just keep drinking. Doesn't matter."

"The fuck it doesn't."

There are things she remembers - things that she can hardly believe she can recall, given how exhausted she was the year the Blight ravaged Ferelden. They were the walking wounded, the walking dead, and everybody dealt with it in their own special way. Morrigan snarked and Alistair cracked jokes while Leliana prayed and Wynne read and Sten didn't do much of anything at all other than shake his head and eat fucking cookies while Zevran attempted to have sex with every tavern wench in every village they passed by. Oghren drank. It wasn't that different.

Yes, she remembers him so dead drunk he couldn't find his pants, arguing with her dog, arguing with himself, but she also remembers how he was brave without any reason, following her down into the Deep Roads after horrors, after his wife, with hope but no expectation that it would bring him anything other than disillusion and death. She hadn't disappointed him in that regard, but he'd had her back, stuck around when she'd had to put Branka down, even when she let Caridin destroy himself and the Anvil, even when they came out of hell with nothing more to show for it than a promise from the king and a handful of new terrors to put them to bed at night.

She watched him struggle to make good, watched him keep trying even as life conspired with gravity, kicking him in the teeth and pulling him down. Watched him win and lose, watched him give up when the sun went down only to get back up the next morning and try again. Watched him pour her a glass of the strongest liquor he could find after she'd done what she had to do to Alistair, twice, to make sure they stayed alive. To make sure there was a king on the throne. To hedge as many bets as she could, even if it left her hollow and cold and the perfect vessel for the kind of rotgut that her red headed dwarf swilled down like water.

He'd been there, hammer and flask, when they carried her down from the top of Fort Drakon. He'd been there, hammer and flask, when they loaded her up with more titles all in capital letters and thrust her into a mess of a keep and a mess of a political situation and a mess of Grey Warden secrets.

Of all of the people who had ever helped her get one over on the Blight, Oghren was the only one who stayed. Hammer and flask and a big, broad, smelly fart machine at her back because sometimes drunk jokes needed to be told and sometimes she needed to be dissuaded from cold blooded murder by someone who really never let that sort of thing bother him.

"It doesn't matter," he says again, and she realizes that she's playing with the hilt of her dagger. The Grey Wardens are villains as often as they are heroes and she's doing what she can to change that, but too often she has only one setting - the one where she's bad at bargaining and the situation is too dire to waste time going _around_ when she could go _straight through_.

Someone snickers behind her and she can feel her fraying restraint start to snap, loud in her ears as the sound her knife makes when she slams it back into its sheath and stands up fast enough to make the chair she's sitting on fall over with a crash. She kicks it out of her way with a snarl, and the last thing she sees are both of Oghren's thick red brows lifting up into his hairline before she whirls around and stomps over to where two hapless recruits, blanching beneath their freckles, stare at her in horror, scattering like roaches when she flips their table.

Ale goes flying everywhere. Somewhere Seneschal Varel weeps.

_"Un-fucking-acceptable."_

She doesn't yell. It isn't her thing. Words rip like barbed wire regardless of how loudly they're spoken, and she grabs one of the whelps by the scruff of his neck and shakes him as though he weighs nothing, snatching the other by the ear like her mother used to do when she and Fergus got out of hand with their bickering.

The quick stab of grief at the memory does nothing to quell her temper, and she swings them around until they are both forced to look at Oghren - who is still drinking, staring as though he's seeing two of her. Maybe he is. That part doesn't matter.

What matters is that she's worked herself up to full ranting steam, and she shakes both boys by their various grips. "_How dare you?_ Don't you know who this man is? Don't you have any respect?" It's not as though she's going to give them a chance to answer, or that there was much of a risk of them doing so, gaping and horrified as they were, but she flings them away from her and plants metal armored fists on metal armored hips and glares hard enough to wither all the plants within a twelve mile radius, sneering as she speaks.

"What do you fools think a hero looks like? Some gilded asshole on a bright shiny steed whose boots have never seen mud? Some two penny pretender who smiles for the approval of a crowd and never picks up a sword? _Real heroes have scars. _Real heroes have _problems. _Real heroes don't just have to make hard choices, they have to live with their consequences, and the fact that this _real hero_ has _spilt his blood _for the likes of_ you_ makes me _sick_."

There is complete silence in the mess now, eerie creaking from above where the wind pushes against the rafters from the outside, ale dripping off the seat of a nearby chair, mug upended over it. She remembers to breathe, air swelling her chest beneath the insignia of the Grey that she wears with fucking pride, and plants her feet solidly into the earth.

"Learn your history. Learn some respect. Get out of my fucking sight."

There's a slow clap before she sits down. It's awkward. This isn't her finest hour and she's not the most eloquent - clearly - with public speeches, and Oghren is actually laughing when she comes back to the table.

"That was adorable."

"Shut up, dwarf."

"Real bleeding heart, you are."

"I said shut up."

He laughs, just like every other time, and pours her another drink.


End file.
